Shop lights have enjoyed widespread use both in residential applications, such as basements, workshops, garages and plant growing areas, and they have also enjoyed widespread use in commercial and industrial applications, such as shipping rooms, mail rooms, service stations and the like.
Many shop lights are utilitarian in look, fabricated from painted sheet metal and including other components which provide a general unfinished look. Further, shop lights in current use have housings which are typically fabricated to size. That is, the housing for a twenty-four inch flourescent lamp would have to be fabricated from a different set of tools than that to house a thirty or thirty-six inch flourescent lamp.
Further, current shop light fixtures are not generally suitable for applications for different light sources such as flourescent or halogen lamps, largely because of the greater heat generated by halogen lamps.
One object of the present invention is to provide an extruded metal housing for shop lights adapted to different applications as well as different light sources. For example, the same housing can be used for flourescent lamps of different length simply by cutting the housing extrusion to the desired length. Moreover, the same housing, which is formed from extruded metal, can be used for different lamps, including flourescent, ultra violet or “black” light, or halogen light sources because the ability of the extruded housing to dissipate heat is great enough to accommodate all of these light sources. Moreover, the shape of the extruded housing adds further strength to resist deformation or bending.
Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description of two separate embodiments, accompanied by the attached drawing wherein identical reference numerals will be used to refer to like parts in the various views.